Breakdown of الحكم قال ان الفريقين اتعادلوا.
ان
that
يقول
to say
الفريقel-farî'
the team
الحكمel-hakam
the referee
Questions & Answers about الحكم قال ان الفريقين اتعادلوا.
How would a native Egyptian speaker usually pronounce this sentence?
A common pronunciation is il-ḥakam ʔāl in il-farīʔēn itʕādlu.
You may also hear small variations such as:
- in or enn for ان
- itʕādlu or etʕādlu for اتعادلوا
That kind of variation is normal in spoken Egyptian Arabic.
Why does الحكم mean the referee here? I thought that spelling could also mean something like the judgment or the rule.
Because normal Arabic writing usually leaves out short vowels, the same spelling can represent different words.
Here are two common possibilities:
- الحَكَم → il-ḥakam = the referee / arbiter
- الحُكم → il-ḥokm / il-ḥukm = the judgment / rule / الحكم
In this sentence, the sports context makes the referee the correct reading.
Why is قال pronounced with a glottal stop instead of q?
Because in Egyptian Arabic, the letter ق is usually pronounced as ʔ rather than q.
So:
- قال is usually pronounced ʔāl or aal
- In more formal Arabic, it would be qāl